green buildings
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New use for green roof: grazing reindeer
"Santa Claus" (real name: Dave Kavanaugh, entomologist) has brought his reindeer to the green roof of the California Academy of Sciences. Between now and January 16, they'll be grazing its gentle slopes and fertilizing them with bon bons, because everyone knows that reindeer shit delicious Christmas treats.
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Here’s a house made of newspaper and lottery tickets
Texas Tech engineering students are testing out Building Blox, cinderblock-style construction materials that are basically bulletproof papier mache. The blocks are made from a slurry of recycled newspapers, phone books, and lottery tickets, but they're twice as strong as cinderblocks despite weighing a third as much. They also improve a home's energy efficiency by insulating […]
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Putting the wilderness back in our cities
Neil Chambers’ new book, Urban Green: Architecture for the Future, is a study in imprecision. Ankle deep and a mile wide, the book reads like a half-baked primer in green design and conservation science. It could have used another year or two in the oven. It’s too bad. At the heart of this book — […]
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Carbon-eating paint could clean air and strengthen buildings
Okay, now this one really sounds fake: Scientists are working on a carbon-eating paint, which would be capable of turning emissions into limestone. In other words, it would let buildings eat carbon and then use that fuel to grow, like a living thing. The secret is synthetic chemicals that behave like microorganisms. Their creator calls […]
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Can we turn mining pits into underground cities?
Architect Matthew Fromboluti designed this inverted skyscraper to make use of abandoned open-pit mining operations in Bisbee, Ariz. The 900-foot underground building (maybe we should call it a mantle-scraper?) wouldn't just be for residences -- it would comprise an entire self-sufficient subterranean city, including crops fed by skylights.
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The world's first vertical forest is under construction in Milan
We've pretty much established that trees are awesome -- they make you smart, improve your home's value, filter pollution, provide shade, and produce oxygen. But even in a city that prioritizes green spaces, surface area is at a premium. How do you provide enough trees while still living densely? Milan, Italy, has a creative answer: a forest in the form of a skyscraper.
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Experiment in (e)co-habitation gets the green light
It looks like a hippie commune. It smells like a hippie commune. But the Belfast Cohousing & Ecovillage is not a hippie commune!
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Take a video tour of UMD’s prize-winning Solar Decathlon house
The Chesapeake Bay's sad state has yielded on positive result: the bay ecosystem inspired the University of Maryland's "WaterShed" house, which won the Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon over the weekend.
You can take a tour of the house above. WaterShed features solar panels, a green roof, a rain harvesting system, solar thermal water heating, sink and shower water filtration, "constructed wetlands" instead of gardens, and an indoor waterfall (!) that helps control humidity.
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Watch cute kids build their own school out of bottles and trash
Especially if you're susceptible to optimistic reggae (I am!), this video of kids helping to build their own school out of bottles and trash ought to make you a little misty.